Pokémon has officially reached its 30th anniversary, and with that comes another special anniversary set in 30th Celebration. As you would probably expect, most of the early attention surrounding the set has been focused on the collectible side of things. There are plenty of throwbacks, unique artworks, and cards designed to celebrate the history of Pokémon. But if there is one thing we have learned from previous special sets, it is that competitive players shouldn't overlook them.

Smaller sets have a pretty interesting history in the Pokémon TCG. Obviously, with fewer cards than a normal expansion, there are naturally going to be fewer cards that make an impact competitively. However, that hasn't stopped some of these sets from giving us cards that went on to become format staples, create entirely new decks, or even win some of the biggest tournaments in the world.

The easiest comparison is Celebrations, which was released for Pokémon's 25th anniversary in 2021. Celebrations was about as nostalgia-focused as a set could possibly be, but it still gave us multiple cards that ended up having a serious competitive impact.

Kyogre is a great example. Kyogre eventually found its perfect home in Lost Zone Box, where it gave the deck an absurd late-game win condition capable of taking multiple Prizes at once. Lost Zone Box with Kyogre would go on to be considered a Tier 1 deck for stretches of its lifespan and became one of the most recognizable ways to play the Lost Zone engine.

Then there was Flying Pikachu VMAX, which had an even more immediate impact at the highest level of the game. Its Max Balloon attack prevented damage from Basic Pokémon on the following turn, which was incredibly valuable in a format filled with powerful Basic attackers. Azul Garcia Griego paired Flying Pikachu VMAX with Arceus VSTAR and won the 2022 North America International Championships with it. A couple of months later, Ondřej Škubal took Arceus/Flying Pikachu VMAX all the way to a World Championship.

Not bad for a couple of cards from a tiny anniversary set.

Pokémon GO followed in 2022 and gave us another perfect example with Radiant Charizard and PokéStop.

Radiant Charizard basically made an impact as soon as it became tournament legal. Ross Cawthon showed how powerful the card could be with Inteleon / Radiant Charizard at the 2022 World Championships, where he made a deep run with the deck. Just a few weeks later, Piper Lepine took a similar Inteleon/Charizard strategy to the Baltimore Regional Championships and won the entire event.

And Radiant Charizard certainly wasn't a one-format wonder. It continued finding homes in different decks throughout its entire time in Standard, eventually becoming a natural partner for Charizard ex and remaining relevant all the way until it rotated.

PokéStop was another card from the set that ended up having a huge competitive career. Being able to look at the top three cards of your deck, put any Item cards you found into your hand, and discard everything else made it an incredibly powerful Stadium in decks built to take advantage of it. Over the years, it became an important engine in a variety of aggressive strategies and remained competitively relevant alongside Radiant Charizard for essentially the entirety of their time in Standard. For such a small set, getting two cards with that level of staying power is pretty impressive.

More recently, Shrouded Fable gave us Pecharunt ex and Fezandipiti ex. Pecharunt ex's Subjugating Chains Ability immediately gave Darkness decks a new switching option and enabled strategies that otherwise wouldn't have functioned nearly as smoothly. And then there is Fezandipiti ex. I think there is a legitimate argument that Fezandipiti ex is one of the best utility Pokémon ever printed. Flip the Script gave basically any deck access to three additional cards after one of its Pokémon was Knocked Out during the opponent's previous turn. There wasn't some complicated engine you needed to build around it, either. You could simply put Fezandipiti ex into your deck and immediately have access to one of the best comeback draw effects we have ever seen.

That's what makes these smaller sets so interesting from a competitive perspective.

Obviously, there is going to be plenty here for collectors, but after going through the set, there are also quite a few cards that caught my attention as a competitive player. Some look like immediate additions to decks that already exist, while others are harder to evaluate and may need the right format or supporting cards before we see their full potential.

So rather than looking at the biggest chase cards or the best artwork, I want to look at 30th Celebration strictly from a competitive perspective.

These are the cards from 30th Celebration that I believe have the best chance to impact tournament play, where they could potentially fit, and which ones I would make sure to have before we really get a chance to see what this set can do.

Pikachu

With all of that being said, this article isn't really about the collectability of 30th Celebration. There are going to be plenty of incredible cards to collect from this set, but what I really care about is a much simpler question: Which cards are actually good? And there is probably no better place to start than with the face of the entire set: Pikachu.

As part of the 30th anniversary celebration, this set features 32 different Pikachu cards, including two Pikachu ex. It's a really cool concept from a collector's perspective, and I'm sure plenty of people are going to try to collect all 32.

Competitively, though, I have some bad news. The single-Prize Pikachu are absolutely horrible.

I went through all of them looking for something that could potentially have a niche, and there just isn't much here. Most of these cards are clearly designed around the celebration itself rather than competitive play, which is completely fine. Not every card needs to be tournament viable, especially when you're printing 30 different versions of the same Pokémon.

The two Pikachu ex, however, are at least worth talking about.

The first has Pika Pika Parade, which, for a single Colorless Energy, allows you to search your deck for Basic Pokémon and put them directly onto your Bench. An attack that doesn't deal damage and ends your turn setting up normally isn't something I'm going to get too excited about, but there are situations where this could be useful.

Area Zero Underdepths is the first card that comes to mind. Decks using Area Zero can potentially have a massive Bench, and Pika Pika Parade gives you a way to fill that Bench extremely quickly. Whether spending an entire attack on setup is actually worth it is another question, but the effect is strong enough that I wouldn't completely write the card off.

The other Pikachu ex is much more interesting to me.

Its Zap Zap Frenzy attack allows you to attach any amount of Basic Energy from your hand to your Pokémon in any way you like. That immediately opens the door to some pretty ridiculous Energy acceleration if you can build around it correctly.

One idea that immediately came to mind was pairing Pikachu ex with the new Sylveon ex from 30th Celebration and Energy Search Pro. Energy Search Pro can potentially load your hand with a bunch of different Basic Energy, Pikachu can then accelerate all of that Energy onto your board with Zap Zap Frenzy, and Sylveon ex can take advantage of having all of those different Energy types in play.

On paper, there is definitely something there.

The bigger question is whether that is actually strong enough to survive in a competitive format. You're spending an attack with Pikachu ex just to accelerate Energy, and any deck built around the combo is going to need enough payoff afterward to justify giving up that turn. That's a pretty big ask when the best decks in the format can put you under pressure immediately.

I wouldn't call either Pikachu ex an obvious competitive staple, and I definitely wouldn't rush out to build a deck around them. But unlike the 30 single-Prize Pikachu, I don't think they're cards we can completely ignore.

Pika Pika Parade has some legitimate synergy with Area Zero decks, while Zap Zap Frenzy has enough of a unique effect that somebody will probably try to break it. The Sylveon ex/Energy Search Pro idea is where I would start, although I'm not convinced the finished deck will be strong enough to compete with the top decks in the format.

So, out of 32 Pikachu, we have 30 that I wouldn't touch competitively and two that at least deserve some testing.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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